Domain SNAFU - GoDaddy flubbed up the release of .me domains

Today was to be the big day for GoDaddy, one of the biggest domain sellers in the world. Today, they were given permission to release the .me domain (just like .com or .net). TechCrunch reports:

Earlier this year GoDaddy won the rights to distribute domains under the extension .me, which belongs to the country of Montenegro.

But now, dozens of other people are having problems since we’ve been bogging down their servers since 11am EST. And for good reason too! Who wouldn’t want a website thats called allabout.me or pay.me or shoot.me? For some of us, its fun to have a memorable website domain name. For others, its a business of buying and selling such names like screw.me or teach.me. Either way, I wanted a couple of domains for future use. Hit the bump to see the email I got from GoDaddy when I tried to buy a .me domain

But what happened? Just like Jason from TC, I too got 2 letters from GoDaddy stating the following:

Dear Kurt Eng,

The following domain name has failed to be registered:

HELPFOR.ME

Error: HELPFOR.ME: cannot register - already registered

We will evaluate this error and retry the registration
if appropriate.

I received this email twice because the first time I tried to buy my intended domain, I recieved this email 30min later. So I went back to GoDaddy to see if the domain was still available, and it was! So I tried to purchase this again and low and behold, I got it! Only an hour later I got the same email stating this domain could not be registered. So I tried 1 more time on GoDaddy and by this time, the domain was already taken…

So now I sit here with all of the other people who have had the same problems as I have had. And I just wonder, what will GoDaddy do to help all those people who received these letters? I think TechCrunch got it right on the button with their article title “GoDaddy’s Domain Registration Totally Screws .me”

If you’ve run into this problem, please leave a comment. I’d love to hear your story and what domain you tried to purchase. I got techhelpfor.me and failed at helpfor.me :-(